The prospect of being able to carry out expropriations at a lower cost delights the municipalities which have been calling for a reform of the expropriation system for years, as the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Geneviève Guilbault, is preparing to do with the filing of a ‘a law project.
This bill, aimed at amending the Expropriation Act, provides in particular that the indemnities must be calculated on the basis of the market value of the expropriated property and not on the value to the owner or according to the income that an owner could draw from it in the future, revealed The Press Tuesday.
“For us, it’s music to our ears. This is something that has been requested for a very long time. It will give us oxygen, give us the means for our ambitions when it comes to acquiring land, ”commented Mayor Valérie Plante on Tuesday, on the sidelines of the Agora de la Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal. (CMM).
She cited the case of the extension of the blue line which forced the City of Montreal and the Government of Quebec to pay three to four times the anticipated price for the expropriations. “It’s money that we could put elsewhere. She recalled that Quebec was the only Canadian province to have a regime based on the potential value of a site. “So we are very satisfied. It was the right thing to do. »
Mayor of Varennes and recently elected to the presidency of the Union of Quebec Municipalities (UMQ), Martin Damphousse was also relieved by the planned rule changes in terms of expropriation. To this end, Mr. Damphousse cited the example of the interim control regulation (RCI) adopted in June 2022 by the CMM in order to shelter golf courses in the metropolitan area from real estate development and convert them into green spaces or in natural environments. “But there are several golf-owning companies that would like to assess the land for future zoning. Very often, these spaces have a park or golf zoning, but the owners believe that the market value must be based on a future zoning. So they are talking about 300, 400 or 500 million,” he explained. “The new law on expropriation comes to define that it is according to the real value of today. Right there, the difference is major. »
Impacts on the economic attractiveness of Quebec
For its part, the Urban Development Institute of Quebec (IDU), which represents real estate developers, considers that expropriation is an “exorbitant power” which infringes the rights of owners. “To expropriate is first of all to confiscate. The expropriated person is stripped of his property against his will. And even if he had agreed to sell his property, the moment when he is expropriated is not necessarily the moment when he would have chosen to sell to obtain the best price or the best conditions”, underlines an analysis carried out by the IDU Legal Circle last September.
According to its president and CEO, Jean-Marc Fournier, the vocabulary changes from one province to another, but the compensation systems are equivalent in all the provinces. “If Quebec reduces the value of the compensation and therefore the value of the right of ownership, this could reduce the economic attractiveness of Quebec,” argues Mr. Fournier in an email. “At a minimum, the government should have an independent analysis done of the consequences of this choice before voting on the bill. »